A Fatal Attachment

by Robert Barnard

  • • •

  “I’d better take that ream of typing paper up to Lydia,” said Thea Hoddle to her husband.

  They were lying in deck chairs in the garden of their house in Bly. It was a substantial house, built in a style which Lydia referred to disparagingly as Headingley Tudor. It had been bought, of course, when Andy had a good job and a secure future. More recently they had taken in lodgers and the occasional bed and breakfast guest in order to make ends meet. Thea would be glad if those days were now over. At her time of life she no longer enjoyed sharing her home with others.

  “Don’t bother,” said Andy, turning the page of his Independent. “I’ll take it up to her this evening. I can then give Lydia the glad tidings that I am now in the ranks of the respectable and gainfully employed.”

  “Yes—I suppose you’ll enjoy doing that,” said Thea, looking at her husband affectionately. “Don’t be mean to her.”

  “Mean to her? Why should you think I might be mean to her? We have always remained on excellent, cool terms. In any case I hardly have any sort of whip hand over her: I shall still be only a late starter in an ill-paid profession, and she will always be a successful and nationally known bitch.”

  “Do you think bitch is the right word to describe Lydia?”

  “Witch, vampire, succuba, virago, harpy, vulture, blood-sucker, emotional leech—call her what you will,” said Andy, waving his hand in a lordly way. “I haven’t her skill with words.”

  “You manage,” said his wife.

  • • •

  Lydia got great pleasure out of her preparations for tea. She had asked her cleaning lady, Mrs Kegan, to bring up a cake from the village baker’s—she had given up making cakes years ago, and she didn’t trust her hand now. But she made scones, and put them out with strawberry jam and cream, and she cut substantial sandwiches suitable for boys’ appetites and filled them with cold beef, with tomato and cheese, with salmon and shrimp paste. These were the sandwiches that Gavin and Maurice had always called for, on the numerous occasions when she had fed them as boys.

  It will not be the same, she kept telling herself. I must not expect it to be the same.

  But the boys certainly did enjoy the same food. They arrived, nicely dressed but behaving rather awkwardly. It was the food that soon caused them to shed any gaucheness, and they tucked in with a will, Colin eating scone after scone and getting whipped cream all over his upper lip, Ted relishing the sandwiches. They probably would have preferred Coca-Cola to drink, but Lydia felt that on that there would be no concession: at tea one drank tea.

  “Are you settling down at the new school—whatever its name is?” Lydia asked.

  “North Radley High. It’s all right,” said Ted. “It’s not a good school, but it’s all right.”

  “Some of them laugh at our accents,” said Colin. “But that’s stupid. We don’t have accents. They have accents.”

  “It helps that we’re both good at cricket.”

  “Though there’s some are jealous about that too. They say we’d never be eligible to play for Yorkshire.”

  “We say: ‘Who’d want to?’ ”

  Both boys laughed.

  “I suppose it’s helped that it’s been such a lovely summer so far,” said Lydia.

  “Yes, it has,” said Colin. “We’re going away to the seaside when school breaks up. Southport or somewhere like that. Dad says if Mum can’t make the effort we three men will go.”

  It was as if a door had opened a tiny chink, giving light on the situation in the Bellingham household. Lydia’s eyelids flickered, but she was too clever to pursue the subject at once.

  “I’m afraid I usually avoid the English seaside resorts,” she said. “The English look their worst in warm weather: all those tattoos and hairy legs and beer bellies.”

  “And the men are even worse,” said Ted.

  The two boys rocked with laughter. Lydia smiled, then giggled indulgently. Nothing wrong with schoolboy humour. She would educate them out of it as time went by, into something more refined, ironic. She had with Gavin and Maurice—though, heaven knew, Maurice could have no use for refined humour in Waterloo Terrace. Please God let these boys not disappoint her as Maurice had done.

  “Does your mother not like the seaside?” she asked, her head bent over the teapot as she poured fresh cups of tea.

  “Oh—it’d be the same if it was walking in the Lakes,” said Ted. “Mum doesn’t want to do anything these days.”

  “Probably her time of life,” said Colin.

  “She’s only forty-four, you ignorant oaf.”

  “Well, you can get it early. Anyway, it’s always been Dad who was the doer—always crashing around, digging and sawing and fixing things. Mum just lets things wash over her.”

  “Well, that’s true, but you’ve got to admit it’s got a lot worse lately.” Ted turned to Lydia. “We think they’ll get a divorce when we’re grown up.”

  Lydia shook her head, though to her it sounded eminently likely.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re exaggerating things.”

  “I don’t think we are. Dad’s getting more and more irritated. And he’s not a patient person at the best of times.”

  “Did you divorce Mr Perceval, or did he die?” asked Colin, with schoolboy artlessness.

  “His name was Loxton. I reverted to my maiden name. Actually we divorced.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want to stay married to him any longer. Let’s not talk about him. He’s the original sleeping dog who should be let lie.”

  She said it with a smile, so that the boys should not feel abashed. Colin had not finished with questions.

  “When I said our name was Bellingham yesterday, you said something funny—I don’t remember what, but something about your fate. What did you mean?”

  Lydia gave a gesture of dismissal with her hand and smiled charmingly.

  “Oh, just one of my silly ideas. One of my ancestors was Spencer Perceval, He was the Prime Minister during the Napoleonic Wars, and he was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by a man called Bellingham.”

  “Why?”

  “He was a bankrupt who blamed the government. Actually he was probably mentally deranged, but they hanged him.”

  “Well, we’re not mentally deranged,” said Ted, smiling. “You needn’t fear we’ll assassinate you.”

  “I don’t!” said Lydia.

  “We’re very ordinary really,” Ted went on apologetically, as if he sensed that somehow they had aroused excessive expectations. “We go to a very ordinary school—do nice safe things like cycling and playing cricket.”

  “Oh—safety,” said Lydia dismissively. “Safety isn’t something to live your life by—you’ll find that out as you grow older. Anyway I’m not sure it’s so very safe playing cricket. One of our heirs to the throne got killed by a cricket ball.”

  “Really?” said the boys together. “Who?”

  “Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George II.” She ventured on a joke that Gavin and Maurice had always enjoyed. “His father died on the lavatory seat, and he died playing cricket. Which shows the Hanoverians gradually becoming less Germanic and more English.”

  The boys laughed unrestrainedly, Lydia with them. The concession to schoolboy humour had gone down well. She pressed more cake on them and felt a great wave of happiness surge through her. Her life was coming back into kilter again.

  • • •

  Trudging up the hill from Bly with a ream of paper under his arm, Andy Hoddle’s eye was caught by two cyclists at the top. They seemed to be coming out of Lydia’s gate. As they got on their cycles he saw them wave. They passed him cycling on their brakes down the hill, and he recognised the two boys he had seen at North Radley High. He smiled at them, and they smiled back in a rather off-hand way. But then why should they pay him any attention? A balding man in late middle-age, running to fat, shabbily dressed. He wouldn’t pay him any attention himself.

  W
hen Lydia answered his ring on the doorbell he sensed that she was flurried, and that she was reluctant to ask him in. Still, she could hardly leave him on the doorstep while she fetched the money for the paper: Lydia always did the right thing.

  “Well, you have had a party,” he said, in what he hoped was a neutral voice, as they stepped into the sitting room. “Looks like a prep school tea.”

  “Just two young friends. But they’re older than prep school age.”

  “Yes they are.”

  Lydia busied herself with her purse to ease the silence.

  “How much was it?”

  “Just two ninety-five, I got the duplicating paper—you say it serves its purpose, and it’s so much cheaper.”

  “Quite right. Oh dear—I’ve only got a ten pound note and some small change. Have you got change?”

  “Only small stuff. Never mind. It’ll do when I see you next time.”

  “No, Andrew, I couldn’t think of it. I’ll raid the piggy bank. You know I’ve had one ever since . . . since the boys used to come up. And I’ve never opened it.”

  “Most of the coins will have ceased to be legal currency,” said Andy brutally. “Don’t worry about it, Lydia. There’s no urgency. I’ve got a job.”

  “You’ve what?”

  Lydia failed to keep out of her voice a note of outrage, as if his getting a job robbed her of one of her legitimate reasons for feeling superior to him. Andy had wrong-footed her again, and a shadow of annoyance passed over her face.

  “I’ve got a job. Actually it’s at North Radley High, where your new boys go.”

  Lydia, determined not to react to that, took to rummaging in her purse again.

  “Oh, here’s another pound. I think I can do it. Yes—do you mind all this small stuff? Well, that is good news, Andy. Do you think you’ll enjoy teaching?”

  “I think I’ll cope. I used to coach Gavin and Maurice a lot with their physics, you remember. Oh, we had a phone call from Maurice, by the way. They’re coming up on a visit the weekend after next. You must come down while they’re here.”

  “They? Is that wife of his coming too?”

  “Oh yes. And the baby.”

  “Well, perhaps—perhaps if you’d just ask him if he’d come up and see me. You’ll think me snobbish, but I’ve tried and I can’t like that woman.”

  “You’ve only met her once, Lydia. Perhaps you should try over a longer period. We shall, of course. Maurice obviously loves her. It’s the least we can do.”

  “Ye-es.”

  “Particularly as Maurice always felt—I’m sure he felt—under the shadow of Gavin. Imagined he was less loved. Thea and I have always felt guilt about that.”

  Lydia always hated it when Thea or Andy talked about loving their sons.

  “Gavin was so brilliant,” she said assertively, as if staking a claim or rebutting a criticism. “It was impossible not to feel that he was special. If he had lived he would be enjoying the fruits of success now. Captain of his own ship . . .”

  “Perhaps.” A thought struck Andy, and suddenly it became impossible to keep it back. He shook off the restraints of all those years since Gavin’s death and looked straight at Lydia. “The difference between us, Lydia, is that if we should hear tomorrow from a survivor that Gavin at the end behaved in a cowardly or a despicable way, I would love his memory exactly as I do now. So would Thea. But your love for him would be destroyed.”

  She looked at him with outrage.

  “Cowardly? Gavin could never have behaved in a cowardly way. What a disgusting thing to suggest.”

  Andy shook his head sadly.

  “You see—you haven’t got my point at all. You didn’t love Gavin as a person—and that’s true of Maurice too. You can’t forgive him for not being the sort of person you thought he should be. But we can accept it, and we’ll try to accept his wife as well. Good night, Lydia.”

  She could hardly bring herself to return his farewell. He had done an unforgiveable thing: he had dragged all the feelings about Gavin and his death out into the open. Into the hideous, demeaning light of day. So far they had all three of them nursed those feelings, nourished them in private, and thus had managed to keep up that facade of friendship and family affection which propriety demanded. What would come of that now?

  And he had destroyed that feeling of warmth and happiness that the visit of the boys had brought her. Despicable. But, she told herself, a failure like poor old Andy was bound to be resentful of success, resentful of happiness. Bound to be a destroyer.

  As he walked through Lydia’s gate Andy felt glad he had brought things out into the open at last, and pleased that he had defined the difference between Lydia’s love for his sons and his own. But as he walked on his mood changed: he began to feel mean and defiled. His love for Gavin did not need to be defined. And certainly it should not have been used to score a point over Lydia. Once again she had brought out the worst in him, had besmirched the finest, most pure emotion he had ever known.

  Then he felt guilty that he could not feel so fine and pure a love for Maurice.

  CHAPTER 4

  “SHE likes us.”

  “Of course she likes us, you oaf. Goes out of her way to meet up with us, asks us to tea . . . It was good, that tea.”

  The boys had needed a couple of days to assimilate their first independent social occasion. Bicycling had precluded talking on the way home, and when they had got there they had walked in on a domestic row—or rather on their father shouting at their mother, and their mother looking as if she were a thousand miles away, examining some recherché fragment of Greek statuary, perhaps, or some intricate Byzantine mosaic. It has struck Ted suddenly at that moment that he hardly recognised his own mother.

  Now, the Monday evening, when they were up in Ted’s bedroom supposedly doing their English homework, they could talk about the experience because they had both thoroughly digested it. Ted, the elder, was a confident, sturdy boy, with a lock of dark brown hair falling over one eye. He should have been the one who could best understand the nature of the bond Lydia had begun to forge between herself and them, but in fact this was an emotional area in which he felt uncertain. Perhaps this was because the bonds between the Bellingham boys and their own parents were ill-defined: semi-detached love from their mother, a hectoring, blundering concern from their father. Colin, slighter but handsomer, with a charm of which he sometimes revealed that he was aware, seemed to accept Lydia more whole-heartedly.

  “She’s very intelligent,” he said now.

  “Yes . . . She’s more than that. A teacher can be intelligent. Lydia’s an intellectual.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, it’s like more so. I mean, an intellectual lives by his brain. His whole life is in the mind. He’s always thinking.”

  “I don’t think her whole life is in the mind. Otherwise she wouldn’t be so interested in us.”

  “I don’t mean it literally, daftie.” Ted thought for a few moments. “She talks a lot about her nephews.”

  They both sat thinking about that for a time. The thought that they were in some way substitutes was both obvious yet difficult to put into words.

  “At least she does take an interest,” said Colin.

  “Yes. It makes a change. . . . Though Dad’s interested, I suppose.”

  “Do you think so? When he’s around he sometimes shouts at us. I suppose you could call that an interest.”

  “Mum used to be interested. . . . I’m worried about Mum.”

  “Yes. Something’s happened to her. She’s just switched off . . . Do you like her? Lydia, I mean.”

  Ted considered. He was a considering boy.

  “Yes. Yes, I do. She’s interesting. Out of the ordinary. She doesn’t say the sort of things ordinary people say. And she doesn’t talk down to us.”

  “She makes you think,” agreed Colin. “Makes you see things from a different angle. . . . In a way it’s flattering.”

  “Flatte
ring?”

  “That she seems so interested in us. It makes you think you’re not so ordinary after all.”

  “You never did think you were ordinary,” pointed out Ted, who knew his brother better than anyone. “You’ve got a very high opinion of yourself.” He thought. “You know, I do wonder whether she’d be as interested if we were both girls.”

  They thought about this.

  “I rather don’t think she would.”

  “Don’t let her hear you come out with a sentence like that!” They both laughed. They could still look at Lydia with objectivity. “She has standards. That’s rather good in a way. She . . . she has expectations of us.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Colin. “But what’s in it for us?”

  “Like I said, it’s someone who’s interested in us. It’s like another home life—and we don’t get much home life here. And Lydia’s an education in herself.”

  Colin pursed his lips. He had meant by his question something much more concrete, but on reflection he decided to keep his own counsel. Colin, so apparently open and artless, was yet a lad who was very good at keeping his own counsel.

  In Ted the interest in their burgeoning friendship with Lydia Perceval ran parallel with a concern for their mother. That evening, when she had dragged herself upstairs to yet another early bed, he said to his father:

  “Dad, don’t you think Mum may be ill?”

  Nick Bellingham shook his head with the decisiveness that was characteristic of him, and which hid a congenital uncertainty.

  “No. She’s just exhausted after the move. She never wanted to move up here anyway. She’s just getting back at me.”